


Faraway

by Goldy



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-08 19:11:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1952757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldy/pseuds/Goldy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by that line in EotD: <i>Sometimes I say something… or do something… and he looks at me, and I just sort of think… he’s not seeing me. He’s just remembering.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Faraway

He once licked ice cream off Rose Tyler’s nose.

One moment, his mouth had been flapping, going on about grasshoppers and sunbeams and scientific formulas she couldn’t _possibly_ even begin to understand. Her head bobbed up and down as she listened, her tongue poking out of her mouth to reach her ice cream. She didn’t even notice when she unintentionally smeared her nose in the process.

He stopped mid-sentence. “So _then_ I thought if I split the cells I could reproduce the—you have ice cream on your nose.”

She blinked a few times in confusion, eyebrows furrowing together as she busily tried to understand how that was in any relevant to grasshoppers.

“It’s just…” he waved a finger in front of his face to demonstrate. “Just a bit of vanilla…”

She stared at him, obviously not understanding this very basic concept.

“Hang on—“ he handed her his own ice cream cone, raised his eyebrows, and then ducked down to lick it off.

He pulled away. “There we are, then!” He smacked his lips together for emphasis.

Rose beamed, and it felt brilliant—absolutely brilliant. He should lick things off her nose more often. Especially ice cream things.

“You’ll put anything in your mouth,” she said.

“Nah, not everything,” he said. Which was true. He would _definitely_ not lick anything that was furry.

She handed back his ice cream cone and he took her hand. Her fingers were sticky from the ice cream and he vaguely considered licking those, too.

He didn’t, though.

***

He worried that Mickey would be the thing that would finally make her leave.

Oh, there might have been a moment of hesitation after meeting Sarah Jane, but nothing truly serious. Even after Reinette, she never said anything about leaving.

But it was _Mickey_. Solid, dependable Mickey. As if a parallel world wasn’t enough.

She was just so… quiet. He didn’t know what to say. Every time he spoke, his voice sounded too loud. Every time he twitched a muscle or waved a hand, it felt false, like he was trying too hard. So he hid in the TARDIS and gave her time alone with Jackie and pretended that the endless waiting didn’t bother him.

And then after four days, she found him bent over the console, trying to calculate how he’d gotten to that world in the first place. She hugged him from behind, arms folding up over his torso, breath warm on the back of his neck.

“I’m never going to leave you. Never.”

He had trouble breathing. He felt like he could kiss her. More than that, he _wanted_ to kiss her.

He swallowed deeply and turned around. He picked her up into a proper hug instead. She laughed softly, holding on so hard it almost hurt.

***

_There’s something in the air. Something coming._

He wanted to bundle her up and take her somewhere safe. Just… take her to the edge of the universe and stay there, never seeing another living soul again.

Just the two of them.

He could, he knew. He had the TARDIS. He could take her and run. Run, run, run, run. Hadn’t it been enough? He deserved a piece of happiness after everything.

He could take her somewhere with ice cream and kiss her— _actually_ kiss her, not just duck out at the last moment—take her hand and never let go.

The only problem was, she would never stand for it. To shut Rose up would be to take away everything Rose _was_. And—oh, they’d be so terribly bored after just one day.

So instead he moved faster—taking her everywhere he could think of. He held her hand and watched her face light up and tried to imprint every detail onto his memory.

She sensed it because she rarely let go of him. Only when she slipped off to the ladies room or they got separated or they visited Jackie.

Hundreds of planets and thousands of places and she still managed to find wonderment at it all.

***  
 _“How long are you going to stay with me?”_

_“Forever.”_

He almost told himself not to believe her, but his smile was so wide, it felt like his jaw was breaking. She saw and laughed.

“Well,” she continued. “So long as you don’t start leaving horrible cheeses out in the console room again—”

“I was giving it _air_!”

“It smelled _horrible_!” Rose said. “I had to do three washings just to get that smell out of my clothes.”

“Oh, come on,” he muttered. “It wasn’t _that_ bad.”

“Yes, it was,” said Rose, sliding closer so she could poke him in the side.

He rolled his eyes, and caught her hand in his own. He squeezed her fingers. “Did you really mean it?”

She tilted her chin to look up at him. She didn’t ask what he meant. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I did. That alright?”

“Yeah,” he said after a pause.

Her eyes held his and then she moved forward—pressing her lips to his in a soft kiss. He barely had time to react before she pulled away, knowing smile on her face.

“How about that?” she said. “Was that alright?”

He cleared his throat a few times, grip on her hand tightening. “Yeah,” he finally managed. “That… that was more than alright.”

***

“Did you hear anything I just said?”

He jumped slightly, losing his grip on the sonic screwdriver. It hit the grating with a dull thud. He’d been _awful_ careless with that thing recently.

“Uh—yeah,” he said. “‘Course I did.”

He bent down to pick up the screwdriver. When he straightened, Martha’s piercing look told him she didn’t believe him.

He scratched at the back of his neck. “You were—hang on—you were talking about your family. Right? Your family. We’re… we’re going to meet your family…”

He trailed off, any excuses about not doing domestic lodging in his throat. Oh, who was he kidding? With Rose, he’d gotten Jackie and Mickey and Pete, and to say he didn’t do domestic would be a bold-faced lie.

But they were all gone. Every one of them.

Martha blinked a few times and then folded her arms across her chest. “Yeah,” she said dully. “My family.”

He made a show of tinkering with the console and mumbled something about how the TARDIS had been acting up recently.

Sometimes he wanted to speak with Rose so badly, it felt like something was choking him. Everything that had happened—all these things—and she didn’t even know it. It didn’t seem possible. She should know it. She should know about Martha and Boe and Dalek Sec. If she knew about it, she would understand. He wouldn’t have to carry it alone.

Martha came over to stand next to him, worried gaze burning into his profile. “Doctor… are you alright?”

He hunched over the console.

“Fine! I’m fine. Everything’s… fine,” he said. He turned to face her, forcing a wide smile. “Martha Jones. I like that. Martha of the Jones’s.”

She smiled at him. “You up for meeting the rest of the Jones’s, then, Mr. Smith?”

Instead of answering, he pounded one fist down on the TARDIS, and they both grabbed on to keep from crashing to the floor.

He had to do what he'd always done. Keep going.  



End file.
